This is a guaranteed roundtable sponsored by the GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature Forum for the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, January 8-11 in Toronto, ON. In the spirit of the conference theme “Family Resemblances” and the call to resist categorizations and exclusionary boundaries, this roundtable assumes an expansive understanding of children’s literature scholarship in mapping its potential futures. Our conception of children’s literature includes, but is not limited to, childhood studies, age studies, theory, cultural studies, library science, psychology, and education as well as objects of analysis beyond literature such as film, social media, print culture, television, comics, material culture, music, and games both recent and historical. This year’s theme invites not only expansive understandings of children’s literature scholarship but also scholarly reflections on kinship and relationality specifically—concerns integral to interrogations of categories of age and texts that are made for young people. What are the critical investments that unite us as scholars interested in children’s literature and childhood in a world under threat? How might our different methods, approaches, and objects of analysis connect across disparate areas of focus? We invite emerging and established scholars to share their new work with us—mapping the futures of our field—while we consider our generative forms of relatedness and diverse points of intersection. Scholarship that approaches these questions from the perspectives of Indigenous, critical race, global, neurodiverse, queer, trans, feminist, ecocritical, and/or activist methods are particularly welcome.

Please send 300-word abstracts (for 5-7 minute presentations designed to be a snapshot of your new work and scholarly investments), current CV, and 100-word bio to Gabrielle (Brie) Owen at gowen3@unl.edu by March 5. Accepted panelists must be current members of MLA by April 1, 2025.